I have to say I like the guide and its not very different from how I play Rammus. However, Im in the philosopher stone group as well. Just because you are able to dominate lesser players by getting 15 kills does not mean its good strategy to skip gold generating items early on. Counting on opposing players being incompetent is not always smart And even if you do get fed, you can never have too much gold.

For everyone who is in favor of philosopher stone, let allow me to post an awesome post by one of my teammates shirokuma on why it is an awful choice on ashe, (and furthermore, an awful choice on any hero.) Translate this into rammus language, and you will see why it fails, in every aspect.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shirokuma

Okay, I'll try to explain to you as best I can as to why Philospher's Stone is a bad pick on Ashe. We'll break this down into an opportunity cost scenario so you can better understand what I mean. Sorry in advance for how long this post is going to be.

Cost
In total, the Philosopher's Stone takes 1115 gold to make. If you plan on keeping this til the end of the game (a likely possibility; games usually end by the time you're finishing your 5th item) you have to disregard its resell value. So let's look at how long it takes to pay for itself.

5 gold / 10 s = .5 gold per second
At a cost of 1115 gold / .5 gold per second gives us a total of 2230 seconds, or 37 minutes and 10 seconds. Ouch; at a cost of 1115 gold, this means that it isn't until you're about ready to get a new item that it actually has become profitable.

So, realizing that it's not a very cost effective item (in terms of paying itself off from the gold per 5 seconds), we'll move on to the next issue it has. And, simply put, that would be the fact that it gives something Ashe can get elsewhere for free...

Mana Regeneration
"But Shiro," you say, "I need the mana regeneration to harrass with Volley!"
That's right, you need some, but you don't need 12 mp5 for it. Ashe has one spell that she uses early game that requires mana, and that's Volley. At a whopping cost of 60 mana per cast, Volley is among the most useful tools Ashe has to keep her opponent(s) at range. Let's look at how long it takes for you to get back the mana for Volley solely based on the mana regeneration from the Philosopher's Stone.

12 mana / 5 s = 2.4 mana per second
60 mana / 2.4 mana per second gives us a total of 25 seconds. Wow, that's quite a reasonable statistic! But here's where it gets iffy...

Ashe has two spells with a cooldown; Volley and Enchanted Crystal Arrow. Our options for Glyphs for pure Physical DPS champions are Focus (-Cooldown), Celerity (-Cooldown/Level), and Clarity (mp5). By the end of the game, Volley has two purposes; stacking an initial slow on a target at range, and ripping off 1-5 peoples' Banshee's Veils simultaneously with a 60 mana 4 second cooldown AoE so that your casters don't waste their spells. For both of these situations, you really only need one cast of Volley to do the trick; you do far more DPS auto-attacking than trying to chain Volleys between attacks (Ashe is a crit cannon, and since Volley can't crit, even hitting all 5 targets at once isn't really worth breaking your auto-attack for). As for Enchanted Crystal Arrow, its cooldown is short enough that we can guarantee it for every team fight, but long enough that stacking cooldown reduction won't let us use it more than once per fight (even if we could, it wouldn't be worth it.) This leaves us one option for Glyphs; Clarity.

Clarity gives us .1 mp5 / level. Socketing all 9 slots with Clarity Glyphs gives us .9 mp5 / level. Realistically, Volley doesn't become useful until Ashe is at least level 3. By this point, Clarity gives us 2.7 mp5. At this point, we're only getting a full Volley back from it about every 2 minutes; not very impressive, but you shouldn't truly be harassing with Volley until at least level 5 (Volley level 3). Now we're up to 4.5 mp5, or .9 mana per second. This means almost every minute, we have a full Volley back; now we're getting warmer. By level 7, we now have 6.3 mp5, or 1.26 mana per second. This is over half the mana regeneration of a Philosopher's stone, all for free.

You may be thinking that it would be awesome to stack both the Glyphs and Philosopher's Stone for insane mana regeneration for Volley, but it's not. Back to my level 7 example, by stacking both, we now have 3.66 mana per second. This equates to one Volley every 15 seconds, and you have no reason to be spamming it that much.

tl;dr - you get enough mana regeneration from Clarity Glyphs that the mana regeneration from Philosopher's Stone is a moot point.

Now that we've covered two parts of the Philosopher's Stone, time to critique the third.

Health Regeneration
Most likely, players who pick up a Philosopher's Stone start the game with a Regrowth Pendant. This provides 17.25 hp5 at the cost of your entire starting pool of 475 gold. First, let's break it down into health per second.

17.25 health / 5 seconds = 3.45 health per second. Let's assume a rookie to the AoS (I refuse to use the "marketing" term for this genre) style of gameplay picks this item up and heads towards his lane. Not realizing that his opponents are hiding in the bush, he walks right past them and they jump out and hit him a few times. He's now lost 200 hp. In order to gain all of this back, he must now wait

That's a rather long time to sit back and wait. However, let's look at the opportunity cost scenario that he picked up a pair of boots and a health potion. He's now spent 385 of his starting gold (a saving of 90 gold) and walks to his lane. Under the same situation of losing 200 health from a surprise attack, he uses his health potion. 20 seconds later, he's back at full health, with more gold and more movement speed than his Regrowth Pendant counterpart.

Now, the argument is that Player 2 has now used up his health regeneration, while Player 1 still has it in case he takes more damage.

To counter this, let's see how many health potions it would take in order for the opportunity cost of a Regrowth Pendant to become profitable.

For the same price, we could buy 13 (and a half) health potions. This would heal you for 2,600 health.

2,600 health / 3.45 health per second (health regeneration of a Regrowth Pendant) gives us the number of seconds we would have to wait to regenerate this absurd amount of health; a total of about 12 minutes and 30 seconds. Mind you, this isn't 12 minutes and 30 seconds of game time, but 12 minutes and 30 seconds of being damaged below full health.

Now, 9/10 people will tell you they'd never go through 13 health potions in a game, and yet of those 9 people, a handful will tell you that they commonly buy a Regrowth Pendant, which offers both a lower health regeneration per second than the potions as well as a far longer delay until when they become profitable. Why? Simple - until you've crunched the numbers (or read them from someone who has) it's not clear exactly what you're giving up for what you get.

Looking at the fact that the mana regeneration from Philosopher's Stone is useless, you've effectively payed 640 gold for a 60% increase in your health regeneration item. For that much gold, you could buy 31 Health Potions. Don't even get me started on the absurd number crunching here...

tl;dr - don't use Regrowth Pendants; use Health Potions.

In conclusion, there's just nothing about the Philosopher's Stone that makes it worth taking over going for your movement speed and damage items first, along with a few health potions. If even one person reads this whole thing and switches away from using them for Ashe, I have no issue with the time I wasted writing this all out.

The health regeneration you get eventually from warden's is more than enough, and the cheap health potions until then are sufficient. (they actually add some survivability if you use one right before a fight)

The post you quoted is indeed partly right when it comes to ashe due to her lack of skills requiring mana.

As for how long the stone takes to pay for itself, consider this:
You finish the stone as soon as possible, meaning you recall back to base once you've farmed up the 650 you need to complete it. Which should not take very long, less than 10 mins into the game. Then you sell it around 20-25 mins later. Not only did you enjoy some crucial hp/mana regen during the early game laning, but it didnt even delay your other items.

Your friend is wrong at the point he is assuming you dont sell it, which is a mistake.

Great guide , having great fun , and i'm fine with the no phil stone thus far , as me and my friend pretty much can always get the kills for money , and it's not a fact of them sucking , but a good combo and good organization .

But in the end it's up to the player and see what works best , for me not going for it works , does it for some other person tho ? i don't know , up to them to make the right choice .

For everyone who is in favor of philosopher stone, let allow me to post an awesome post by one of my teammates shirokuma on why it is an awful choice on ashe, (and furthermore, an awful choice on any hero.) Translate this into rammus language, and you will see why it fails, in every aspect.

Your teammate's argument fails from the very beginning when he calculates the time it takes for the whole item to pay itself off, and not just the recipe. Hell, even the recipe adds a good deal of regen and not just the +5 gold/sec.

Your teammate's argument fails from the very beginning when he calculates the time it takes for the whole item to pay itself off, and not just the recipe. Hell, even the recipe adds a good deal of regen and not just the +5 gold/sec.

Does it help that I've tested philosopher's stone in about 50% of my games and every game it left MUCH to be desired?

Philosopher's
A. Takes time away from chalice
B. Takes time away from chalice
C. Takes time away from chalice
D. Gives you **** damage mitigation, which is a stat you should never NOT be increasing with rammus.
E. Becomes COMPLETELY redundant once you get warden's and eventually warmogs.

Honestly if you care about the regen that much then just swap out your armor quints suggested for non-static health regen per level runes, but I've never had any trouble at all with health regen.